When I was a young boy, whenever trouble visited me, I would head for the forest in back of our house, and follow the Crystal Springs with its twists and turns, its hills and bluffs and valleys. I couldn’t walk ten feet without something catching my eye, a wood lily, a patch of purple trillium, milkweed bursting open and floating everywhere, some cattails, and enormous bullfrog staring me in the eye. I felt entirely at home in those woods. In my mind, they went on forever. I never saw another human being in here, though, occasionally, I would find a really old soda or medicine bottle half-buried in the mud, and, this, of course, gave me thoughts of what the previous life of the forest might have been, a few campers from the past century, nothing more. Some days I would be gone all day. Just as long as I got home for supper I wouldn’t be missed. No one would even ask me where I had been, and I never volunteered anything. There wasn’t much conversation around the table, but I didn’t mind. I was always hungry, and loved mother’s cooking. One day I had started out early, right after breakfast, and wanted to see how far I could get. Three deer had crossed my path right in front of me, and I felt lucky. Later, I spotted a porcupine clinging to a branch above my head. When I got hungry, I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a log beside the stream with butterflies flitting about. That was my home, that was where I really lived. I walked on and on, until nothing was familiar any longer. I was very excited to be entering unknown territory. I remember thinking, perhaps I was the first person to have ever stepped on these grounds. The bluffs were steeper, and there was no trace of a path anywhere. My arms and legs were pricked by thorny bushes, and clouds of insects occasionally pestered me and got into my eyes so that I was blinded for moments at a time. I wasn’t sure if I could find my way back, as I had lost all sense of direction. Sometimes I thought I heard something following me. The woods were so thick it was practically dark. I had no idea what time it was, but I definitely did not want to spend the night in there. As much as I had wanted to know what lay beyond, I now longed for the safety of the familiar. I turned and started to fight my way back through the thick brush. Once, I stopped for breath, but and a copperhead slithered over my shoe. I started to run, but soon fell and started to slide down a slope. I caught hold of a sapling and pulled myself up, sweating. My hands were bleeding. I stood still and tried to get my bearings. I heard a girl’s voice singing, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. “I’m over here,” I yelled, and the voice stopped. It was ten years before I ever got out of that forest. By then, my parents had moved, or died. I never found them. I don’t even have any pictures of them. “Eat you green beans,” my mother would say. “I never ate my green beans, and look at me,” my father said. These are my memories of a happy childhood.